Motivations of terrorism

In addition to commenting on post-Cold War terrorism in general, Prof. Wilkinson puts forth some very specific views on terrorism in the Middle East, threats from the extreme right, and issue-specific terrorism as well. He concludes with five principles "which have the best track record in reducing terrorism". Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the COMMENTARY series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views. Despite the end of the Cold War and the faltering beginnings of a peace process in the Middle East, terrorism still remains a serious threat in many countries, not surprisingly, given that the underlying causes of the bitter ethnic and religious struggles which spawn terrorism pre-dated the Cold War, and most of these conflicts remain unresolved.

While the former Soviet Union sponsored terrorism on an opportunistic basis, the idea that all international terrorism was concerted by the KGB during the Cold War is clearly an over-simplification. The overthrow of the communist dictatorships did remove an important cluster of state sponsors of terrorism. However, one of the main attractions of terrorism to its perpetrators is that it is a low-cost but potentially high-yield weapon, and it is generally possible to find weapons and cash from alternative sources, including militant supporters and sympathizers in your own home base and those living and working in prosperous countries in the West, as well as from racketeering, extortion and other forms of criminal activity, and in some cases, alternative state sponsors. Moreover, the end of the Cold War has also had a major negative effect on political violence: the removal of communist one-party rule has unleashed numerous long-suppressed, bitter ethnic conflicts.

Western europe

In Western Europe it is the historic separatisms of Irish republicanism in Northern Ireland and Basque nationalism in Spain that have spawned the most lethal and protracted terrorism. In Northern Ireland the IRA and Loyalist cease-fires are still holding, and the British and Irish governments and the Social Democratic and Labour Party leader, John Hume, deserve credit for their efforts towards peace. But the cease-fire is still extremely fragile, and it is going to be very difficult indeed to convert it into a lasting and honorable peace. The declared objectives of IRA/Sinn Fein and the Unionists are as far apart as ever, and the terrorist para-militaries still have their stocks of weapons and explosives. In Spain ETA has been greatly weakened by improved Franco-Spanish police co-operation, but the terrorists show no signs of giving up.

Eastern europe

In the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the removal of communist dictatorship has taken the lid off many simmering ethnic rivalries and hatreds. The most horrific example of mass terror being used as weapon is Bosnia. Less well-known in the West are the conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Georgia. The recent attempt by the Russian Army to suppress Chechen separatism is a dramatic reminder that the Russian Federation itself is full of ethnic groups that bitterly reject Moscow's right to rule them.

AFRICA

The most tragic examples of conflicts in which mass terror has been used are to be found in Africa. In Rwanda it has been seen on a genocidal scale, causing hundreds of thousands to flee or to face massacre at the hands of their tribal enemies. Typically, ethnic wars of this kind are waged by armed militias and are marked by extreme savagery towards the civilian population, including the policy of "ethnic cleansing" to terrorize whole sectors of the civilian population into fleeing from their homes, and the use of massacre, rape and torture as weapons of war.

Ethnic conflict is the predominant motivation of political violence in the post-Cold War era. It is important to recognize that the concept of the "security dilemma", conventionally applied by realists solely to relations between states, applies equally well to the rivalries of ethnic groups. When one group looks at its neighbours and decides to enhance its weapons and security forces in the name of self-defense of the group, neighbours are likely to see such moves as a threat to their own security, and will set in train the enhancement of their own power, thus very probably triggering the conflict they sought to avoid.